Hopefully I can bring you many more live bumble bee removal videos in the future. I don't get many calls for them and have been wanting to remove one live and relocate them. This colony was removed from the underside of a house trailer not too far from where Emil lives. Emil had the connection on this one. We used a red light at night and vacuumed them up with the Walter Kelley bee vac. About 60 or so were vacuumed. They are extremely loud insects. Holding up the vac inner box they are probably three times as loud as honey bees and emitted what smelled like some kind of orientating pheromone best I could figure. The scent was mostly citrus like with a very faint hint of vomit on the tail end. Mostly like citrus, so that's a good thing! :-D

Workers removing a large tree that had fallen against the trailer were stung by some of them and did throw one of those pest bombs underneath that wound up killing 20 or so as far as we could guess. The nest itself was concealed under insulation so it was shielded from the bug bomb to a great degree.

There was a small piece of the nest that separated and I was able to observe this piece and try the nectar they had gathered. The nest feels like foam rubber to the touch, very strange. I had read that they collect nectar but don't convert it to honey like honey bees do but I have to tell you that it did not have an unusually high water content. It was very "honey like" and in fact some of the best nectar/honey I have ever tried!

Emil set them up in a medium hive box and placed some coconut fiber under and over the nest. They feel most secure with something almost touching them so the coco fiber should do just fine.

Emil has been giving me daily updates and so far so good.

We did not take a great deal of footage so I had to work with what I have. Hope you enjoy the video!

The workers clearing the tree were stung and there is debris underneath the trailer that needs clearing. Most people who have bumble bees don't think they are a good thing. It was also an opportunity for us to perform the live removal and Emil wanted to set the colony up badly in his yard. The next one I'm keeping! :-D

I relocated a bumble bee colony a couple of months ago. They are indeed very loud when they are riled up (as in being moved). My colony was probably about half the size of yours and I didn’t use a bee vacuum. I just slid a board under the nest, picked the whole thing up (with bees mostly inside) and moved them into a nuc box. So the bee vac worked well for removing them?